Tracing the Lines of Nazca

Imagine you're flying a plane. You're above the giant Nazca Desert, about three hundred kilometres south of Lima, the capital. You're getting kinda tired and sore from all this flying when suddenly you glance down and see giant geometrical figures etched on the rusty sand of the desert. You see triangles, rectangles, trapeziums and spirals. You see more patterns that you think are abstract but it does not take you long to realise that these are actually figures of animals and plants.

You see a spider, a hummingbird, a pelican and a monkey too. Will you believe me that this isn't a flight of fantasy? These are the Lines of Nazca (also spelt Nasca) There are over 800 straight lines, 300 geometric figures and 70 animal and plant designs, also called biomorphs. Some of the straight lines run up to 48, while the biomorphs range from 15 m to 3.6 km in length (as large as the Empire State Building).

A Monkey Biomorph

The lines are drawings created on the ground made by removing rocks and earth. The rocks which cover the desert have oxidised over time and turned to a deep red rust colour, which when removed reveal light coloured sand forming a striking contrast. Because this region receives so little rain or wind to cause erosion, these patterns have remained unchanged for the past 500 to 2000 years.

These patterns were first observed by Toribio Mejia Xesspe, a Peruvian archeologist in 1926 but it was only after commercial flights began to ply over Peru that they were brought to public awareness. And since then, there have been a variety of hypotheses regarding the origin of the lines including one which believes that they were made by ancient aliens!

A Biomorph of a Hummingbird. Hummingbirds were associated with fertility by the Nasca people.

The most probable explanation, however, seems to be one by Johan Reinhard, a National Geographic explorer who suggests that these patterns were made by the indigenous people of Nasca to lead to sacred places to perform rituals and appease the gods to bless them with water and a good harvest. This is backed by the fact that spiral designs and animal symbolism have been found in other ancient Peruvian sites as well.

The spider, for example, is considered a sign of rain while the hummingbird is associated with water. But how they could plan and create designs of such proportions while on the ground can still not be explained.

As no single theory can conclusively explain these mysterious lines, all we know is that with the new technological research our understanding will only evolve. And till then, we can keep guessing as to whether these lines were created by giants or aliens or not. Our imagination has no limits, does it?

Resource: Golomb, Jason. “Nasca Lines.” National Geographic , www.nationalgeographic.com/science/archaeology/nasca-lines/. Accessed 16 Mar. 2017.

Image sources: The UnMuesuem.org and www.ancientsummit.com